Welcome, TIME Readers!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by Luis Argerich via flickr.]

If you’ve come here from Bonnie Rochman’s article, Bedtime Math: A Problem a Day Keeps Fear of Arithmetic Away, thank you for dropping in! I have nearly 800 published posts about learning and teaching math, which can seem pretty overwhelming.

Here are a few good places to start:

  • Tell Me a (Math) Story
    What better way could there be to do math than snuggled up on a couch with your little one, or side by side at the sink while your middle-school student helps you wash the dishes, or passing the time on a car ride into town?
  • Homeschooling with Math Anxiety Series
    Our childhood struggles with schoolwork gave most of us a warped view of mathematics. Yet even parents who suffer from math anxiety can learn to enjoy math with their children.
  • How to Conquer the Times Table
    Challenge your student to a joint experiment in mental math. Over the next two months, without flashcards or memory drill, how many math facts can the two of you learn together? We will use the world’s oldest interactive game — conversation — to explore multiplication patterns while memorizing as little as possible.

I hope you enjoy your visit to my blog.

HexaFlexaParty This Weekend!

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Sunday, October 21, is the worldwide hexaflexagon party in honor of Martin Gardner’s birthday. Gardner’s article about hexaflexagons launched his career as a recreational math guru who inspired people all around the world to love math.

Here’s how to join in the fun:

Hexaflexagon History

Continue reading HexaFlexaParty This Weekend!

Math Teachers at Play #52

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

[Photo by bumeister1 via flickr.]

Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! We have games, lessons, and learning activities from preschool math to calculus. If you like to learn new things and play around with mathematical ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.

Scattered between all the math blog links, I’ve included highlights from the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice, which describe the types of expertise that teachers at all levels — whether in traditional, experimental, or home schools — should seek to develop in their math students.

Let the mathematical fun begin…

TRY THESE PUZZLES

By tradition, we start the carnival with a couple of puzzles in honor of our 52nd edition. Since there are 52 playing cards in a standard deck, I chose two card puzzles from the Maths Is Fun Card Puzzles page:

  • A blind-folded man is handed a deck of 52 cards and told that exactly 10 of these cards are facing up. How can he divide the cards into two piles (which may be of different sizes) with each pile having the same number of cards facing up?
  • What is the smallest number of cards you must take from a 52-card deck to be guaranteed at least one four-of-a-kind?

The answers are at Maths Is Fun, but don’t look there. Having someone give you the answer is no fun at all!

Continue reading Math Teachers at Play #52

Math Teachers at Play #46: Living Books for Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! Here is a smorgasbord of ideas for learning, teaching, and playing around with math from preschool to pre-college. Some articles were submitted by their authors, others were drawn from the immense backlog in my blog reader. If you like to learn new things, you are sure to find something of interest.

Living Books for Math

A child’s intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find… We must put into their hands the sources which we must needs use for ourselves, the best books of the best writers.
…
For the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food; it lives, grows and is nourished upon ideas only; mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body.

— Charlotte Mason
Toward A Philosophy of Education

Princess Kitten and I took a longer than usual holiday break from homeschooling, but now I’m in plan-for-the-new-semester mode. I hope to include more living math in our schedule, so I decided to illustrate this edition of the MTaP carnival with a few of my favorite living math books. I’d love to hear more living book suggestions in the comments!

If you click on a book cover, the links take you to Amazon.com, where you can read reviews and other details (and where I earn a small affiliate commission if you actually buy the book), but all of these books should be available through your public library or via inter-library loan.

Let the mathematical fun begin…

Continue reading Math Teachers at Play #46: Living Books for Math

More Halloween Math

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
by kennymatic via flickr

An Apollonian pumpkin patch and Sierpinski candy corn:

Great ideas for mathy porch decorations:

My favorite blood-thirsty online game from Murderous Maths:

And here’s some less-violent holiday math for the younger set:

Do you know of more mathy fall fun? Share your links in the comments section!

Easy-to-Make Counting Rope

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

This is wonderful! I am definitely not a crafts-person, but I can’t wait to make some of these. If I can just find my daughter’s pony beads….

From Cindy at love2learn2day, who got the idea from a math conference workshop by Kim Sutton.

Krista at the LivingMathForum wrote, “We’ve used these for several years. My son even made a bunch of them a few years ago and sold them at a homeschool resource fair. We always have one in most of our board games to help younger children add up their die rolls. I find them relaxing for some reason, just moving the beads along the cord, and my son will sometimes sit and listen to me reading, etc., and just manipulate the beads.”

Playful Math Lessons

You can use these math activities to play with your counting rope:

Sign Up for the MathCounts Club Program

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

The MathCounts Club Program provides enrichment activities and puzzles for 6th-8th grade math clubs within schools — and homeschool groups may join, too! Participants receive a free Club in a Box Resource Kit, which includes the Club Resource Guide, two game boards to accompany one of the meeting plans, 12 MathCounts pencils, and a MathCounts tote bag for the coach. (Apparently they had good intentions, but they didn’t follow through. My box had no tote.)

A school (or homeschool group) may choose to participate in the Club Program, the competition or both programs. Since these programs can complement each other, any school that registers for the MathCounts competition automatically gets the Club in a Box Resource Kit, too.

For more information, check out these links:

Math Teachers at Play #39

Posted on by Denise Gaskins

Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.

Several of these articles were submitted by the bloggers; others were drawn from my overflowing blog reader. Don’t try to skim everything all at once, but take the time to enjoy browsing. Savor a few posts today, and then come back for another helping tomorrow or next week.

Most of the photos below are from the 2010 MAA Found Math Gallery; click each image for more details. Quotations are from Mike Cook’s Canonical List of Math Jokes.

Let the mathematical fun begin…

Continue reading Math Teachers at Play #39

Math Teachers at Play #35

Posted on by Denise Gaskins
35 is a tetrahedral number

Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers.

Do you enjoy math? I hope so! If not, browsing these links just may change your mind. Most of these posts were submitted by the bloggers themselves; others are drawn from my overflowing Google Reader. From preschool to high school, there are plenty of interesting things to learn.

Let the mathematical fun begin…

Continue reading Math Teachers at Play #35